


to burn your kingdom down

by xerampelinae



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Dark, M/M, atmospheric horror, the breaking of the fellowship except voltron
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:40:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27292831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xerampelinae/pseuds/xerampelinae
Summary: "There's something in the shadows," Keith says."What is it?" Shiro asks, staring into the fathomless, consuming dark around them. Only the accent lights on his paladin's armor pierce the darkness, and only just at that.It's a long moment before Keith speaks again, this time close enough that his breath washes coolly against Shiro's cheek and makes him shiver."Me," Keith says.-Keith disappears. Shiro leaves the Castle of Lions behind in search of him.
Relationships: Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Comments: 16
Kudos: 61





	to burn your kingdom down

No one knows when Keith disappeared. No one knows why. But it seems like Shiro's the only one that matters to--and that hurts more than most things, that hurts as much as not even knowing _when_ or _why_ or _how_ Keith disappeared. 

"He does this sometimes, you know," Pidge says, hands moving over her keyboard without pause. "Just disappears while the rest of us work on whatever."

"Like when," Shiro finds himself saying, voice distant.

"Come on, how could you forget, Shiro?" Lance says. "He was always out there when you were--"

"When I was what," Shiro's voice is strong and sharp as cold steel within a wooden sheath, "missing?"

"Keith kinda likes to go off and do his own thing," Hunk says, eyes barely flicking away from Pidge's computer before returning to it. "It's not a big deal."

Shiro turns and leaves the room before he does something as cruel as their words.

-

"There's something in the shadows," Keith says. 

"What is it?" Shiro asks, staring into the fathomless, consuming dark around them. Only the accent lights on his paladin's armor pierce the darkness, and only just at that.

It's a long moment before Keith speaks again, this time close enough that his breath washes coolly against Shiro's cheek and makes him shiver.

"Me," Keith says.

-

"Is it selfish to say 'Come back and haunt me?'" Shiro asks.

"Not if I agree," Keith says. "Not if I ask first."

"You do so much for others, Keith--I want you to be selfish," Shiro confesses. "I want you to be happy."

In the darkness, Keith's hand is strong and possessive as it curls around Shiro's hipbone. "What if what I want is you, Shiro?"

Keith's hand is smaller than Shiro's, but not so much that he can't slide his hand close and interlace their fingers. "Then," Shiro says, head turned so that their breath mingles, "you should have me."

Under Shiro's mouth, Keith seems to relax and let the distance he's quietly tried to build between them dissipate. These days, he runs cooler than Shiro, but he's still warm as life and careful with teeth that seem to sharpen the longer the kiss lasts.

It's hard to stop kissing Keith, but air is still necessary; still, they remain pressed close, with Shiro's head angled awkwardly back. They stand like this, lips brushing as the tide of one breath rolls in, then out.

"I want to see you," Shiro confesses, chest moving strong. Powerfully, Keith's hand flexes around Shiro's hip, broad enough to span the armor there. His fingertips feel like pinpricks, like cat's claws coming unconsciously unsheathed.

"I'm--" Keith says. "--different. I'm not ready for that, not yet."

"Alright," Shiro sighs. The kiss that Keith presses to his mouth feels like an apology, brief but honest. Then Shiro's alone in the softening dark with his wanting heart.

-

Shiro's loved the stars for a long, long time. He lost his family young, but not before he got sick--not before his family lost their hope for a wide, naive future before him. Starshine has always remained, however unseen.

Piloting _Kore_ was a dream in the best way. And then in Voltron, how could Shiro be bored when there were so many stars he'd never seen before, so many unseen things that he could all but reach out and touch. Now, though--the stars shiver as they move through the lonely abyss. In the midst of his own search, Shiro shakes with the same loneliness.

-

"Shiro--" Hunk says, crowded in front of the bridge terminal with the others. "Why don't you come back to the castle? We--you've got us worried about you."

"And I'm worried about Keith," Shiro says firmly.

"Look," Lance says, "maybe we messed up, not tracking communications, but it's been _months,_ you're not going to find him out there, why don't you just come back--what if we need to form Voltron?"

There's a long moment before Shiro speaks. "You'll find another pilot for the Black Lion," he says, voice as even as he can make it. Then he closes the communications line.

-

When Shiro works back in search of the last time he or anyone in the coalition was in contact with Keith, it's longer than he thought. Twenty-two days that slipped shamefully, silently by--they've been busy, chasing the specter of Haggar and the remnants of the Galra empire, but the truth is that they are never not busy--and twenty-five days since Shiro and Keith spoke over a communications channel. It had only lasted fifteen minutes before Lance had knocked and said that Hunk and Pidge has discovered something urgent. And Keith had let Shiro go without protest--and that's the part that makes Shiro hate himself most, that he'd let Keith think of himself as second priority to everything else in Shiro's life.

It hurts, but it does give Shiro a point from which to start his search.

"Keith," Shiro says, staring out into an empty expanse filled with the detritus of a space battle, with fragments even of a Galran battleship. "I'll find you. Just--stay alive until then."

-

Shiro launches a shuttle from the castle, trying to regulate his racing heart and temper the feeling of betrayal that almost overwhelms all else. He's spent his life being written off as ephemeral and fighting back against that impression; this feels personal in a different way and it's harder to quell. He doesn't know if it's worth doing. He doesn't know if he could do it.

Suddenly, awareness prickles at him and he smoothly steers the shuttle around to face whatever it is. The heartbeat that follows seems to suspend time itself--Shiro looks and is looked at, to his very soul--and then the shuttle is swallowed whole by the Black Lion.

"I guess it's just the two of us," Shiro says, laughing a little hysterically. In his mind the Black Lion rumbles affirmation.

-

For Voltron, Shiro has travelled great swathes of the universe to know and meet the peoples of so many different turning suns. For Keith, Shiro searches through the most distant and desolate reaches, retracing long forgotten footsteps.

The castle is easy to leave--except for a few precious things, its inhabitants seem to operate on the concept of 'out of sight, out of mind'--and then comes the hard part. Shiro has very little idea of where to search; the longer without any sighting or clue, the greater that Keith will move or be moved still further away, traces hidden or buried.

"Kolivan, do you have any news?"

On the Black Lion's screens, Kolivan's image is grave and wavering, distorted by sporadic bursts of static.

"There has been no contact with Keith," Kolivan says, and not unkindly, "if it were any other Blade, they would long have been consigned to the ancestors."

Shiro understands that there are reasons for the Blades of Marmora to act as they do; and he remembers the choices he's made, backed into far-flung corners of the universe. He shouldn't take Kolivan's words personally, but he does a little. "I promised him once. That I would never give up on him."

"I understand," Kolivan says, voice clear for a moment before it crackles with static again. "We've decrypted coordinates tangential to his last mission but there is no one we can send."

"I'll check it out," Shiro says, hope setting its blade against his heart again. He wants. He wants this to be the right place, he wants this to be where he meets Keith again. He wants so badly that he could bleed for it. "Thank you, Kolivan."

-

"Please, Keith," Shiro begs. "I just want to know you're okay, that you'll be okay--"

In the near-dark, Keith's eyes glimmer like distant starshine. "Just that, Shiro?" he says, voice twisted low. A star screaming endlessly in the void, Shiro thinks helplessly. "That's what brought you all this way, searching for me?"

"No," Shiro says quietly. "No, it's not."

His heart is still hammering with exertion from the way they'd fought, unexpected and frenzied. He'd panicked, senses straining against the pervading darkness and the sudden ambush. Somehow, he'd recognized the flow of attacks, the way his own assault was warded off and redirected. Again, Shiro's heart kicks up, startling at the first brush against his armor, what feels like the press of countless shadowed hands brushing up his greaves and stroking at the backs of his knees where the flightsuit is visible. And Keith--Keith watches him, eyes alight with the glow from Shiro's armor--gaze steady and consuming as a predator.

"We heard about Haggar," Shiro says, mind wandering away from his words as the shadows trace up his body, "and you were gone--Keith, do we need to go? Do we need to run now?"

Keith laughs, a warm, familiar sound. It sends chills down Shiro's spine. "No, Shiro. I took care of it."

-

"Where will we go?" Shiro asks, cradled close in the darkness. Cool breath brushes the side of his neck, his nape, and finally Keith's cheek brushes deliberately against Shiro's own blush-hot cheek. When it darts out, Keith's tongue is almost shockingly hot, arcing up the curve of Shiro's face. Shiro wonders what he tastes like: sweat, pheromones, metabolic waste products?

Keith is different these days but. Shiro will wait for him to be ready to talk. He deserves that, more than anyone else.

"Anywhere," Keith breathes finally, and, "everywhere. Let's go somewhere no one knows us."

"Anywhere," Shiro echoes. Around them the Black Lion seems to purr, and carries them forth to distant stars.

**Author's Note:**

> title from florence+the machine's "seven devils," per the lines "holy water cannot help you now/a thousand armies couldn't keep me out/i don't want your money/i don't want your crown/see i have to burn your kingdom down"
> 
> i can be found on twitter @belovedbacon and on tumblr @xerampelinaekiss


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